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I don’t like (Cyber) Mondays

I just spent another Thanksgiving weekend manually deleting emails that contain “Black Friday” and “Cyber Monday.” Each year I consider configuring my junk mail filter to delete them all automatically. Maybe, next year.

While many head to the malls on the Friday after Thanksgiving, I am one of those who celebrate Buy Nothing Day. Again, this year, I did not spend a cent that day.

And Cyber Monday? I can’t understand why this still exists. It may have had a purpose back in the early days of the Internet when people only had dialup modems at home and had to wait to get back to work in order to shop via a high-speed connection. Now, the only thing special is that online retailers use this day to offer big discounts. There is nothing to stop a few renegade retailers from proclaiming a Cyber Sunday and offering their discounts then. They can even have a Cyber Thanksgiving, so people can eat and shop at the same time.

Meanwhile, Thanksgiving weekend offered US voters another chance to experience buyer’s remorse. It came in the form of tweets from Donald Trump. Now he tweets that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote through election fraud. That’s a first for American politics; we now have a sore winner.

George W. Bush was quite conciliatory when he lost the popular vote to Al Gore by a narrower margin. He even put a Democrat on his cabinet. If Trump wants to heal the country and bring us back together, this is not the way to do it. In the short term, I expect his handlers to take his Twitter account away from him again. Over the longer term, I am expecting a rather short Trump administration. He may not even make it to the mid term elections before getting impeached or being forced to resign. Settling the Trump University lawsuit and admitting his Trump Foundation was a fraud is just the start. His refusal to sell his international businesses will continue to raise questions of conflict of interest. Then wait until his followers discover he is either unable or unwilling to deliver on his promises. Putting Hillary Clinton in jail? He has more or less acknowledged he has no legal case against her. Building a wall along the Mexican border and having Mexico pay for it? Yeah, right.

That’s why I am against any attempts to keep Trump from taking office. If he is denied his votes in the Electoral College, his supporters will have good reason to believe the system is rigged against them. If he actually becomes President, they will soon enough discover that they have been conned by a Reality Show TV star who became our biggest political con man. Let his own supporters hound him out of office. Of course, then we’ll be left with President Mike Pence. Good grief.

About

I am a Quaker living in West Berkeley, CA, a member of Strawberry Creek Monthly Meeting, College Park Quarterly Meeting, and Pacific Yearly Meeting. I came out as a gay man at age 40. I am currently divorced and have two adult children. Many people are curious how a white guy like me got a Japanese last name. For the whole story go to